I've always suspected it's an attempt to defuse flame wars, with the expectation that a lot of comments means a post is highly controversial and stirring up arguments in the comments section.

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unclebucknasty 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Seems unlikely. Using comment count as an indicator of poor quality discussion would treat topics with intense interest and engaging discussion like flame wars.

So, I find this explanation hard to believe, especially given that the mods here are active, and that there are other mechanisms for exposing flame wars (including flagging, down votes, etc).

	▲	yorwba 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		High-quality posts will usually be upvoted by lurkers, ensuring a favorable upvotes-to-comments ratio. But yes, it's a blunt instrument that sometimes has false positives where the mods intervene to turn off the penalty: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...